What our Nations are up against!

How to Use this Blog

Howdy! We've amassed tons of information and important history on this blog since 2010. If you have a keyword, use the search box below. Also check out the reference section above. If you have a question or need help searching, use the contact form at the bottom of the blog. ALSO, if you buy any of the books at the links provided, the editor will earn a small amount of money or commission. (we thank you) (that is our disclaimer statement)

This is a blog. It is not a peer-reviewed journal, not a sponsored publication... The ideas, news and thoughts posted are sourced… or written by the editor or contributors.

2019: This blog was ranked #50 in top 100 blogs about adoption. Let's make it #1...

2019: WE NEED A TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION Commission in the US now for the Adoption Programs that stole generations of children... Goldwater Institute's work to dismantle ICWA is another glaring attempt at cultural genocide.

Search This Blog

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Canada herded First Nations children like cattle

Aboriginal children herded like cattle onto ‘train of tears’

National News |
June 2, 2015
by Kenneth Jackson |APTN National News
During the Second World War Nazi Germany would herd Jewish people like
cattle and load them into train cars heading to concentration camps with
just the clothes on their backs.
They didn’t know where the train was going and they didn’t have a choice.
When they arrived they had identification numbers tattooed on them.
At the same time, the Canadian government was doing something similar across the country with Aboriginal children.
Large trucks would pull up on reserves and haul kids to residential schools.
“The cattle trucks come on the reserve, and scoop up the kids to go,
and seeing my cousins cry, and then, and they were put on these trucks,
and hauled off, and we didn’t know where,” recalled Shirley Leon who
attended a residential school in Kamloops, B.C. during the 1940s.
Leon’s story is one of dozens chronicled in “The Survivors Speak”
book released Tuesday by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Sam Ross fought like hell to stay off the cattle trucks when it
arrived to take him and his brothers from their home in northern
Manitoba to Prince Albert, Sask.

“They took us out to the truck; all four of us. My other two brothers
walked to the truck. But me and my late, younger brother, we fought all
the way, right up, right to the station, train station,” said Ross.
Benjamin Joseph Lafford remembers having no food and no clothes when the Indian agent or RCMP took him away.
“So when the train came, they put us on … every station we stopped
at, there was children, Native children,” said Lafford who was taken the
Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia.

Larry Beardy described his first train trip that took him Churchill, Man. to the Anglican school in Dauphin, Man 1,200 km away.

“There was a lot of crying on that train. At every stop … children
will get on the train, and then there’d be more crying, and everybody
started crying, all the way to Dauphin, and that’s how it was,” said
Beardy. “That train I want to call that train of tears, and a lot anger
and frustration.”

For many, their trip to a residential school started with a letter delivered by a priest.
One recalled being taken away without their parent’s knowing – ripped from a playground by the RCMP.
If parents fought the RCMP or Indian agents the father was threatened with jail.
Others said their parents enrolled them in the schools because the
local priest convinced them the children would be better off with an
education, clothes and food.
On the first day of school for Lynda Pahpasay she was given an identification number.

“We were taken upstairs, said Pahpasay of her Catholic school in
Kenora, Ont. “They gave us some clothing and they put number on our
clothes. I remember there’s little tags in the back, they put numbers,
and they told us that was your number. Well, I can’t remember my
number.”

She was then washed and her hair was cut short. Her brother’s hair was cut completely off.
Verna Kirkness said she stripped and had something poured on her head upon arrival at the Dauphin school.
“It was coal oil, or some, some kind of oil, and they poured it on my head,” said Kirkness.
School life became regimented for the children who say they were programmed.
“We had to line up to go to the toilet, line up to go wash, line up
to go take a shower, line up to go play, line up to go school, eat,”
said John B. Custer.
They also weren’t allowed to speak their own language.
Survivor’s describe wanting to kill themselves and running away from the abuse they suffered – physical and sexual.
Larry Beardy said the students, between eight and 10-years-old, at the Dauphin school finally rebelled.

“We started to notice a lot of my colleagues running way, and, and
every time somebody ran away, the whole dorm would get physically
strapped by the principal of that school … we ransacked the whole dorm.
We went violent,” said Beardy.

The stories of sexual abuse are documented in the survivor’s book.
One recalled being abused by staff and students at the Alberni school.

“I was taken out night after night after night. And that went on
until I was about twelve years old. And it was several of the male
supervisors plus a female,” she said. “It was in the dorm; it was in
their room; in was in the carport; it was in his car; it was in the gym;
the back of the crummy that took us on road trips; the public school;
the change room.”

There’s been 45 successful prosecutions of physical and sexual abuse at the schools.

- Five things to know about the TRC:

1. The commission was established as part of the 2007 Indian
Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, which also included money to
pay for the commission’s work.

2. The commission is led by Justice Murray Sinclair, Manitoba’s
first Aboriginal justice. The other commissioners are Marie Wilson, a
journalist, university lecturer and former senior manager at several
Crown corporations; and Chief Wilton Littlechild, a lawyer and former
Progressive Conservative MP.

3. The group is charged with collecting testimony from residential
school survivors and compiling their stories into a comprehensive
historical record of the schools aimed at educating all Canadians about
the residential schools and their legacy.

4. The records of the commission, including recollections from 6,200
former students, many of whom spoke on video, with be kept and managed
by the National Research Centre on Indian Residential Schools at the
University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, where they will be publicly
accessible.

5. Residential schools operated for about 150 years, with an
estimated 150,000 Aboriginal children spending time in them. At the
height of the residential-school era, the federal government supported
130 such schools. There are an estimated 80,000 survivors of the schools
who are still alive.

- A look at the numbers:

The 1840s – Church-run schools are established for aboriginal children.

1883 – The year the federal government establishes three large
residential schools in Western Canada to “kill the Indian in the child.”

1920 – The year the Indian Act is amended to make it compulsory for
status Indian children between seven and 15 to attend residential
school.

70 – The number of residential schools operating by the 1930s.

130 – The total number of residential schools that received support from the federal government at the program’s peak.

60 per cent – The proportion of residential schools run by the Catholic church.

1996 – The year the last residential school closes outside Regina.

At least 6,000 – The number of children who died in Canada’s
residential schools. Provinces are still handing over death certificates
for aboriginal children from the residential school era.

60 per cent – The mortality rate reached at some residential schools,
according to Truth and Reconciliation chairman Justice Murray Sinclair.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please: Share your reaction, your thoughts, and your opinions. Be passionate, be unapologetic. Offensive remarks will not be published. We are getting more and more spam. Comments will be monitored. Use the comment form at the bottom of this website which is private and sent direct to Trace.

Survivors, write your stories. Write your parents stories. Write the elders stories. Do not be swayed by the colonizers to keep quiet. Tribal Nations have their own way of keeping stories alive.... Trace

Help in available!

1-844-7NATIVE (click photo)

click to listen

Diane Tells His Name

Please support NARF

Indian Country is under attack. Native tribes and people are fighting hard for justice. There is need for legal assistance across Indian Country, and NARF is doing as much as we can. With your help, we have fought for 48 years and we continue to fight.

It is hard to understand the extent of the attacks on Indian Country. We are sending a short series of emails this month with a few examples of attacks that are happening across Indian Country and how we are standing firm for justice.

Today, we look at recent effort to undo laws put in place to protect Native American children and families. All children deserve to be raised by loving families and communities. In the 1970s, Congress realized that state agencies and courts were disproportionately removing American Indian and Alaska Native children from their families. Often these devastating removals were due to an inability or unwillingness to understand Native cultures, where family is defined broadly and raising children is a shared responsibility. To stop these destructive practices, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

After forty years, ICWA has proven to be largely successful and many states have passed their own ICWAs. This success, however, is now being challenged by large, well-financed opponents who are actively and aggressively seeking to undermine ICWA’s protections for Native children. We are seeing lawsuits across the United States that challenge ICWA’s protections. NARF is working with partners to defend the rights of Native children and families.

where were you adopted?

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

Join!

National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network (NISCWN)

Membership Application Form

The Network is open to all Indigenous and Foster Care Survivors any time.

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

This has happened to many, many Native children! We must protect ICWA and enforce it so that it stops! Even non-Native families that are not racist cannot provide a Native child with cultural knowledge and belonging. Only their tribes can do that. #ProudtoProtectICWAhttps://t.co/oA1e5kiK4k

A4: Twenty-one states filed an amicus brief in this case in support of #ICWA. These states, which are home to over 70 percent of tribal nations, know that ICWA helps them better serve Native children and families.#ProudtoProtectICWA

TWO WORLDS Book 1 (second edition)

Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

“The individual pieces are open and honest and give a good insight into the turmoil of dislocation from family and tribe… I think it does have value and a story to tell. I was affected by the stories I read, and amazed by the facts presented…. because it is saying something new, interesting and often astonishing.”

Did you know?

Good words

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

We are #50 in the world?

Every. Day.

adoptees take back adoption narrative and reject propaganda

Disclosure Statement

“We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.”If you buy our books from Amazon, we receive a small payment.